Hello {{ name | there }},

Welcome to the Modern Compass newsletter. Each issue I share one topic across four life directions of Self, Trust, Relationships, and Character to unlock a new perspective to move you forward. If someone sent this to you, [subscribe here].

I’ll start this issue with an apology. Last month was a blur of distractions, heads down editing (and missing my deadlines), and then planning and going on a trip to Grand Canyon which I mentioned on my last issue. Up until last month, I had sent 17 issues over the course of a year+, and never missed the 3rd Friday newsletter drop. Well I missed it last month. What’s worse, I didn’t even realize how late I was until I sent last months issue. I now have the newsletter reminder on my calendar, which I didn’t need until last month.

This months topic is about 4 moves you can make on a relationship that’s on autopilot. To start, I’ll tell a story of why I picked this topic, which consists of several of the 4 moves.

For those that don’t know, Abby is our 6 year old daughter. This summer, after graduating from Kindergarten, we tried a gymnastic day camp for her to be at during the day. This was the first summer out of daycare, which is weird. This full day camp was taxing on her though and we paid the price when she got home. It was stimulating, exhausting, and also a little boring for her repeating the same routine, day in and day out. Struggling what do whether to try some other summer camp or other options, somehow or another we stumbled on the idea of Abby doing half day at camp and the afternoon with me after I picked her up on lunch break. I am fortunate to work from home that I have the option to do this, so I am cognizant and appreciative of that.

For context, my relationship with Abby was admittedly taxed off and on the last couple years when Gwen has come around. My love for Abby hasn’t changed, but it quickly became about keeping things quiet and calm whenever Gwen needed that. Which meant a lot of; don’t do that, Abby be quieter, or stop doing that. Additionally, Abby has always been a momma girls, so most outward affection went mom’s way.

And so, the summer half days with me started. It was a rocky 2 weeks to start. We created a schedule and keep her on it while also getting work done. The schedule did end up working very well.

Around a month in, I just started easing up on her and trusting her more to do the right thing which I recognize I didn’t extend enough trust to her. After lunch & movie, she has 5 study sheets to do from a packet we bought on Etsy, read a book, craft or color, then little tablet time to close out the day. Aside from lunch or tricky words from her studies, she really didn’t demand much time from me. Sometime into that month or so mark, she started this running snuggle thing in my office after lunch which I enjoyed. The days got easier, and this time together just improved our relationship everywhere.

If I had to guess why this had a positive effect on our overall relationship, I think it came down to more trust being given and just being ourselves and authentic together, where we rarely had gotten the opportunity to do that the last few years, just the two of us.

I will never forget on a car ride when we were on the Grand Canyon trip, we were making wishes on a roadtrip we had taken to Petrified National Park. I was sitting next to Abby in the van we rented and when it was my turn, I blurted out my wish to be the best dad that I could be. Don’t worry, on my second wish I was more selfish and wished to be a best selling author. And Abby, without hesitation said “thats a silly wish, because you already are”. 😊 Well…mission accomplished if there ever was one this summer.

Now moving onto 4 moves you can make in a relationship that may be on autopilot. Pick one relationship, and let’s take a look through the 4 directions of Modern Compass.

Self

Awareness is the most prevalent layer for this topic. While the book focuses more on awareness of the self, awareness of your relationships, health, and needs are also important.

Prompt: Why and how does this person bring meaning to your life? Tell them, in what language you feel comfortable dong so.

Trust

In the book I explain the mechanism how we trust covers critical thinking as a filter for what to trust, then Calibrated Trust like a volume dial up and down based on our interactions as to how much we trust. It goes beyond a single dial, where different contexts and domains require different dials.

Example: If you work with me your trust dial might be high with me for AWS Cloud knowledge, if you follow my newsletters your trust dial might be slowly turning higher (I hope) around personal development topics, for legal advice, it’s probably low or non-existant. You haven’t heard me talk about legal advise, why would you trust me there? That is the concept of Calibrated Trust.

Prompt: Seek a new opportunity of trust in this relationship. A new context/domain giving them benefit of the doubt, or turning up the volume on an existing dial.

Relationships

To explain how relationships of all kinds deepen in the book, I made this diagram that outlined the start of relationship and how they expand and “branch”.

Some of this is covered in an earlier issue but not to the extent I’m showing this time. For now, look at the outer diagram. Those outer circles are things showing up in your life from the other person. The little circles are you meeting them in that area and consciously putting effort to be there.

I like to use the example with my wife to demonstrate this. Some of her circles on my side at the beginning were camping and going to state & national parks. I had never done either in my 30+ years of living, until I met her.

Prompt: Could there be something the other person has always enjoyed but you never met them there? Branch out (pun intended) and see if trying to get into an interest of the other persons to strengthen the relationship.

Character

I have a concept in the later chapters of Character that states we’re actually poor at judging our own character, we’re simply to attached to it. When you get the later stages of character, while you don’t need validation from anyone, there is a need to hear your character reverberated back to you from those you surround yourself with, whether they be loved ones, friends, coworkers, etc. Case in point, a philanthropist often doesn’t go around touting everything they’ve accomplished and how great they are (although some do). They hear it from the people around them and the people they’ve impacted. Big difference.

Prompt: Ask the person you have in mind, if you could list 3 things that speak to my character from your perspective, what would they be?

It’s a little comical how I said last month that I would be done editing my book by September. After I got home from our vacation, I created a roadmap to completion and realized it would be more like end of November at my current trajectory of about a week per chapter. I additionally created a weekly system to work through chapters faster to use certain days for certain tasks, moving content around, structure, enhancing, and formatting. I now have a clear path to finishing, and actually scheduled my original editor to come back for copy editing and proofread that I have to get it to her hands by Dec 1st. I think the forced deadline will keep me honest this time!

In December, I’ll be working with someone to design a couple book covers and I’ll be sure to gather some feedback through a couple channels, including you all.

📩 Like this issue? Reply and share what you liked and share it with a friend who’d enjoy it!
📌 Subscribe here: [Newsletter Signup Link]